Golden Boy

T W E N T Y- N I N E

A loud clang woke me up. I sat on a chair, my hands tied roughly behind my back, awkwardly making me lean forward in the seat. My hair, disheveled, hung in front of my face, wet with my sweat. My dress rode up, exposing a good majority of my legs, a shiver running up my spine. An awful smell of manure clung to the air. I couldn't take in a breath deep without choking on it. 

Sharp heels sounded as someone walked across the room. The sound echoed off the concrete walls, filling up the empty space. I shifted in my seat, craning my head to get a glance at who had entered the room. 

"Oh, good you're awake," Maggie stood directly in front of me, dragging a chair to sit in, crossing one leg over the other. 

"What the actual fuck?" I gasped out, my voice hoarse from the after-effects of the drugs. At this point, I should be building up immunity from how often it is used on me. 

"I warned you to go home," she said, "but you didn't want to listen. Now you're stuck with me." 

"Please, I just want to go home," I tried, keeping my eyes downcast, making a show of twitching my leg, and cracking my voice. 

Maggie paused to pick up a phone call, and my mind started to race. I watched her get up and lower her voice, moving across the room. I took the opportunity to construct a plan to get out of this. I wasn't physically strong, having never participated in any sports, and barely following along in gym class so tackling her was out of the question. My next option was to outsmart her by convincing her that I was actually on her side. The only problem with that is I'm a really bad liar, so that wouldn't work either.

I came down to my last option—annoying the heck out of her until she's so frustrated she lets me free. Yes, that would do since I have a knack for getting under people's skin. 

From the first impressions that I made of Maggie, I thought she was a spoiled rich girl who never heard the word no and likely got everyone else to do her dirty work. Never would I have pegged her as the villain type. Then again, I should have seen this coming considering that Jace is literally involved in the most sketchy shit I have ever seen. 

"Okay," she said, coming to sit back in the dirty chair in front of me. "So I can't kill you, so congrats, but they never said anything about not torturing you, so there's that."

I choked on my own spit, a nasty cough making its way out of my throat. "Torture me? What did I do?"

"Jace has been up to some not-so-good stuff recently, and there's word circulating around that a pretty young girl was with him when he did them, so I need you to tell me everything without leaving out a single detail."

I froze, flashbacks of him stealing the Andy Warhol painting, stabbing Oliver Kram, stealing back a special knife, and hunting down George in Central Park, sprang up in my mind. She could have been referring to any one of those moments. 

"I don't know anything," I said, on the verge of breaking down, because I wasn't seeing a way out of this. She a young powerful mage, and I couldn't compare in anything. She could probably rip me to shreds without lifting a finger, giving me enough time to yell out for my mother and shit my pants.

"Look Elliot, you seem like a nice, simple girl," she said, her hand twisting in the air, tightening my restraints until they dug so deeply into my wrists that it broke my skin. "So just tell me what I need to know so that we can move on."

"Can you at least be more specific? Jace isn't exactly a saint. I don't think he's gone more than 3 hours without doing something stupid."

Maggie sighed as if she were sitting in my biology lecture hall. "We both know this is about the painting, Elliot. Don't play dumb with me."